


phantasmata

by johnnysmitten



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - No Band, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Hallucinations, Hospitals, Insomnia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Paranoia, Suicidal Thoughts, Terminal Illnesses, everyone is sad, josh is tired, tyler is odd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 06:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17955425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnysmitten/pseuds/johnnysmitten
Summary: Josh is tired.He's tired of the hospital, he's tired of the visions and he's tired of being unable to sleep.And now he's stuck with a new roommate. He hates his life, and he's pretty sure he's going to hate this new guy he's being forced to interact with.





	phantasmata

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, friends. :)  
> I'm kinda excited about this one. I've been thinking about it for a while now and I know where it's going, but not how I plan to get there, so it should be an interesting ride.

He knew it was coming.

He’d known it for a while now. But knowing what the future held did not make it any easier to digest. Knowing when you were going to die possibly only made it worse. So much worse. The impending nothingness loomed over him like a dark shadow threatening to swallow him whole, and if he’d only had the courage to take his own life he would have already done so.

But Josh was a coward.

So here he was, stuck in a hospital ward for the dying, the terminally ill patients with no hope for recovery.

The fuzzy slippers on his feet and the soft zip-up hoodie wrapped tightly around him did nothing to provide any sort of sustainable comfort. Josh was exhausted. Mentally and physically drained. He longed for sleep. He would saw off all his limbs if it meant he could get one decent night’s sleep. Hell, he’d even take an hour. He’d kill for it.

He sat on the stiff armchair in the corner of his room, tapping his fingers rhythmically against his thigh. He coughed and choked on his own tongue, forgetting once again to breathe.

_Soft decay, echoes of blue-green seascapes. Birds adrift above ocean tides._

_Rip, tear, flesh, dirt. Digging deeper._

The colors burst like a kaleidoscope behind his eyelids. A rainbow of agony. He was trapped again and the buzzing of a nearby radio shocked both his legs off the ground. His arms swung violently out in front of him. He tried to stop them but they had a mind of their own. His head twitched. Twice to the right, once to the left and then his head was floating.

Was that a UFO descending from the ceiling or were the fluorescent lights just dancing again? And what was that, hiding in amongst the crashing waves of the ocean? A Red Cloak. Face masked, eyes black as coal. Not this one again. Josh hated this vision.

His body jolted hard as if he’d fallen onto the floor, but he was paralyzed in the chair.  

_Stop. Please, just stop. Come back. Come back down to earth._

He was having another half-awake-half-asleep-limbo-panic-attack. God, Josh was getting so sick of being stuck between two places.

It must’ve been over an hour that he spent in his thrashing paralysis. The staff didn’t intervene. They’d dealt with his limbo states before and knew it was best not to bother him.

It was a well-known fact that you should never wake a sleepwalker.

But Josh wasn’t a sleepwalker and he was certain that they just didn’t want to get involved any more than was necessary because getting involved meant they might have to interact and speak with him. Heaven forbid. He can’t remember the last time he’d had a real conversation. Forced conversations didn’t count.

People didn’t care. People didn’t want to get close to someone who had less than a year left to live. It was a form of self-protection; Josh knew that and he didn’t blame them. Still, it hurt, being so completely and utterly alone. Every single day of his miserable sleepless life.

Once Josh was out of limbo, he got up and paced around his room. He tried to use some of those grounding techniques that one of his past therapists had taught him. He knew it wouldn’t work.

 _Five things he could see._ His stiff, cold bed with the metal siding and flat, uncomfortable pillow. Pale robin’s egg blue walls. The chair in the corner. The sterile, yet somehow still dirty bathroom to the right of his bed, adjacent the door to the hall. His hands; cold, pale and aching.

Josh flopped back down in the chair.

 _Four things he could touch._ The small ridges along the hem of the sleeves of his oversized camo hoodie. The blanket tossed carelessly over the back of his chair. The wooden arms of the chair, with all their bumps and dents and imperfections. The soft fabric of his Nike sweatpants.

He took a deep breath. It wasn’t working. His eyes blurred, then readjusted.

 _Three things he could hear._ The beeping of heart rate monitors from somewhere in the distance. Muffled voices from the hallway. Soft rain drizzling down upon the window.

 _Two things he could smell._ The stale scent of death and decay. Bleach, from when staff had to clean up Josh’s vomit from the floor after breakfast.

 _One thing he could taste._ Bile, stomach acid.

Was this shit actually supposed to help? Because right now Josh only felt worse. For being stuck in a place like this, for throwing up on the floor, for having visions like he was the fucking oracle from The Matrix.

Sitting still was agonizing, so he began once again with the incessant pacing. Fuck trying to feel better. Josh had no reason to feel good, so why waste time pretending?

Two nights ago, Josh’s roommate had died in his sleep. Josh had cried for hours afterwards. Not because he was sad, no; he barely knew the guy. It was the fact that his roommate died peacefully – in his sleep. That thought was what really hit Josh hard. He would never experience such peace. He wondered how he’d go when the time came.

“You’re giving me major anxiety, man. Can you sit down?” A voice that sounded like it was coming from the doorway startled Josh, causing his body to jump and his heart to momentarily stall.

“Um, sorry. Pacing.” He spoke before turning to address the stranger behind him.

“Well, don’t,” the voice said.

Josh finally caught his breath and turned to face the voice.

A young man around Josh’s age stood staring at him, a puzzled expression on his face. He had warm brown eyes and a floof of hair in the same mesmerizing shade. Josh quickly looked away, casting his eyes downward where it was safe.

“Um, hi,” the boy said. “I’m Tyler. And you are?”

Josh retreated back to his chair in the corner of the room. “Josh,” he mumbled.

“I’m your new roommate.”

Oh, god, not another fucking roommate. The staff had promised Josh no more roommates! They’d said after Gary died that Josh wouldn’t be getting a new roommate. People could never deal with Josh’s late night episodes. The guilt of keeping people awake at night only perpetuated Josh’s anxiety. Why was this happening? Why wouldn’t they allow Josh to be left alone to die in peace and quiet?!

“Oh,” was all Josh could mutter. He picked absently at his sleeve, hoping this Tyler guy would soon quit staring.

“Yeah,” Tyler said as he set a bag down on the bed opposite Josh’s. “I get that you probably don’t want another roommate, but I’m not so bad. I won’t bother you or anything.”

That was definitely a lie, whether Tyler was aware of it or not. Everyone bothered Josh. And worse than that – Josh bothered everyone. They all pitied him. Dying people pitying another dying person. Josh truly was pathetic.

“It’s fine,” he lied. “I can deal with it.” Yeah, right. Josh would be forced to deal with it. It’s not like he was given any other choice.

*

In kindergarten Josh was too shy to tell the teacher he needed to use the washroom. He urinated on himself in the sandbox, wet sand clumping around his feet. Other kids played with the wet sand, laughing and wondering how it got wet. Josh’s shorts were dark; nobody knew. He wanted to tell the teacher; he didn’t. He went home in piss-soaked shorts and embarrassment aching in his gut. He never told his parents.

In middle school some of the other boys forced Josh to eat dirt.

“Swallow it all, loser,” they said, clamping Josh’s mouth shut with filthy hands. Then, “you belong in the dirt like the trash you are.”

Josh wanted to cry; he didn’t.

He ate it, swallowed down the clumps of mud; swallowed his shame. He never told his parents.

In high school Josh ate lunch alone in the stairwell. He wanted to throw up, but he couldn't. He swallowed it all down. His parents knew that he had no friends, they didn’t care.

His father was dying. The disease was hereditary. Josh and his siblings were forced to get tested for the brain anomaly. His brother and sisters’ results were negative. Josh’s results were positive. He wanted to cry; instead he punched a hole in his bedroom wall.

His father died when Josh was sixteen, the same year Josh learned that he, too, would succumb to the same fate. Like mad cow for humans, something was messed up in his brain. Prions. Josh was a mutant.

At nineteen, Josh began to lose the ability to get a good night’s sleep. He dropped out of college because he couldn’t focus. He was exhausted most of the time, getting less than three hours of sleep each night. He dropped out of college and had no plan B. He didn’t need a plan B. He was going to die.

At twenty-one, Josh barely got six hours of sleep a week. He didn’t want to be a burden to his family. He checked himself into a hospital and was placed in a special ward for patients who were dying. A place for them to bide their time; to wait, wait, wait.

He’d admitted himself three months ago. Things were only getting worse, at an alarmingly fast rate. He hadn’t expected it to get so bad so fast. He wanted to cry, but instead all he could do was sit in his chair in the corner of his room.

His mom and siblings visited for the first month. The doctors did weekly tests on him. His disease was rare. They wanted a guinea pig, they wanted to poke and prod at Josh, pick him apart to sate their own curiosity. Josh wanted to not care. Instead, he cared too much.

*

His new roommate exhaled loudly from his bed. Josh sat in his usual chair and looked up, silently groaning. Things already sucked before, and now they’d only get worse with this guy invading his personal space. At least Gary was old. Tyler looked to be about Josh’s age and it made Josh uneasy. Josh picked at his thumbnail until it started to bleed. He kept his eyes on Tyler as he sucked the blood from his thumb.

“I, uh, wasn’t supposed to get a-another roommate,” Josh mumbled. Tyler heard him and glanced in Josh’s direction.

“Well, it’s not like I asked to be here.” Tyler’s eyes danced around the room, fixating upon the overhead florescent lights. They flickered softly.

Josh’s eyes closed, heavy like someone was trying to force a window shut. They fluttered open when Tyler shifted off the bed. He paced for a few moments, but Josh’s eyes were being pulled shut again.

**Author's Note:**

> comments make me happy!
> 
> come yell at me on twitter @TWOSPlCYBOYS  
> or tumblr @twentyonechalupas


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